Subscribe to people in videos

ABSTRACT

A computer-implemented method for enabling users to subscribe to people and other tagged entities is provided herein. Such a method includes maintaining subscription data specifying a plurality of entities subscribed to by a plurality of users, with each of the plurality of entities being a tagged entity associated with a tag. The method further includes identifying a media item associated with one or more tagged entities of the plurality of entities, determining, based on the subscription data, a user of the plurality of users that is subscribed to the tagged entities of the media item, and providing the media item to the user. Other associated systems and methods are also provided.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates to the field of content-sharing platforms and,in particular, to providing and recommending media items according tousers' preferences.

BACKGROUND

On the Internet, content-sharing platforms, like social networks andothers, allow users to connect to and share information with each other.Many social networks include a content-sharing aspect that allows usersto upload, view, and share content, such as video content, imagecontent, audio content, and so on (which may be referred to as “mediaitems” or “content items”). Such media items may include professionallyproduced audio clips, movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as wellas amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos,pictures, photos, audio recordings, other multimedia content, etc. Usersmay use computing devices (such as smartphones, cellular phones, laptopcomputers, desktop computers, netbooks, and tablet computers) to accessthe content-sharing platforms to use, play, and/or consume media items(e.g., watch digital videos, and/or listen to digital music).

As the volume of content available on a content-sharing platformincreases it may become increasingly difficult for a particular user ofthe platform to find the content that most interests that user. Whileefforts have been untaken to employ the expressed preferences of theuser in making recommendations and efforts have been made to organizecontent in ways that facilitate their discovery, these efforts have notbeen entirely satisfactory.

SUMMARY

The following is a simplified summary of the disclosure in order toprovide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. Thissummary is not an extensive overview of the disclosure. It is intendedto neither identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nordelineate any scope of the particular embodiments of the disclosure orany scope of the claims. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts ofthe disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detaileddescription that is presented later.

In one implementation, a computer-implemented method enables users tosubscribe to people and other tagged entities. Such a method includesmaintaining subscription data specifying a plurality of entitiessubscribed to by a plurality of users, with each of the plurality ofentities being a tagged entity associated with a tag. The method furtherincludes identifying a media item associated with one or more taggedentities of the plurality of entities, determining, based on thesubscription data, a user of the plurality of users that is subscribedto the tagged entities of the media item, and providing the media itemto the user. Other associated systems and methods are also provided.

In another implementation, a system facilitates the subscription topeople and other tagged entities in a content-sharing orcontent-distribution platform. The system includes a memory storinginstructions thereon and a processing device communicably coupled to thememory. The processing device executes the instructions to maintainsubscription data specifying a plurality of entities subscribed to by aplurality of users, each of the plurality of entities being a taggedentity associated with a tag, and to identify a media item having one ormore tagged entities of the plurality of entities. The processing devicealso executes the instruction to determine, based on the subscriptiondata, a user of the plurality of users that is subscribed to the taggedentities of the media item and to provide the media item to the user.

In additional implementations or embodiments, computing devices forperforming the operations of the above-described implementations arealso disclosed. Additionally, in some implementations of the disclosure,a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium stores instructionsfor performing the operations of the above described implementations.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present disclosure is illustrated by way of example, and not by wayof limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary system architecture, in accordance withan embodiment of the disclosure.

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary portion of metadata including one ormore tags present in a database in accordance with some embodiments ofthe disclosure.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a feed service component inaccordance with embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 4A is a flow diagram illustrating a method of providing taggedentities for subscription by a user of a content-sharing platformaccording to some embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 4B illustrates an example user interface (UI) 450 for facilitatingthe subscription of a user of a content-sharing platform to a taggedentity, in accordance with some aspects of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of recommending a channelto user based on tagged entities according to some embodiments of thedisclosure.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating a method of recommending a channelfor subscription by a user based on tags in the user's consumptionhistory according to some embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system architecture,according to some embodiments.

These drawing may be better understood when observed in connection withthe following Detailed Description.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Implementations are described for facilitating users in subscribing totagged entities pertaining to media items provided by a platform such asa content-sharing platform. Internet-based media platforms have becomeincreasingly important channels for the distribution and consumption ofmedia such as movies, television, videos, music, photography, and text.As more media distribution has migrated onto such platforms, the amountof content available has increased dramatically. In order to bestsatisfy users of the platform, helping those users to find the contentthey like most among the total amount of content is increasinglyimportant. As described herein, the use of tags for entities associatedwith media items may provide a new and useful technique for improvedcontent recommendation.

Implementations of the present disclosure enable a user to subscribe toone or more tagged entities and for media items to be provided to theuser according to that subscription. In some embodiments, to subscribemeans that the user will be notified of newly added or newly taggedmedia items that have the tag of the person or entity in metadata. Atagged entity may be a person, an object, a location, a brand, etc.After a user subscribes to a tagged entity, the user's subscription maybe recognized by a feed service that then provides one or more mediaitems having the subscribed tagged entity to the users feed. Thisinformation may also be used by the content-sharing platform torecommend additional media items that include the tagged entity or arein channels that are related to the tagged entity.

Frequently in this disclosure, examples directed to user-uploaded videosare presented. This is done for ease of explanation of some of thefeatures described herein. However, embodiments with other content arealso within the scope of this disclosure, regardless of whether specificexamples of such are provided herein.

Thus, in some embodiments, one or more components of the content-sharingplatform may monitor the database of media item metadata. The databasemay include a listing of media items available to users of thecontent-sharing platform. This listing may be presented as a listing ofmedia item identifiers used by the content-sharing platform. Inconnection with the listing of identifiers of media items, each mediaitem may be associated with one or more tags. These tags may be brief,text-based descriptors of entities associated with the media item.

For example, a media item having a famous athlete depicted therein mayinclude the name or nickname of the athlete as a tag in associatedmetadata. Other tags such as the team of the athlete, jersey number,venue, etc. may also be included in the metadata. The athlete may bedepicted or otherwise associated with hundreds or thousands of mediaitems present in the content-sharing platform. The athlete may also havea personal media channel to which the athlete uploads or posts mediaitems. However, many of the media items depicting the athlete may nothave been uploaded by the athlete to his channel. For example, anadvertisement in which the athlete appears, which may be owned by itssponsor, may not appear in the athlete's channel. This advertisement,whether including video, audio, or a combination thereof, may be taggedupon upload with the athlete's name.

Among the users of the content-sharing platforms may be a user that is afan of the athlete, i.e. a “fanatic user.” The fanatic user may view anumber of media items tagged with the name of the athlete. A feedservice of the content-sharing platform may monitor a consumptionhistory of the fanatic user in order to better recommend content thatthe fanatic user will consume and enjoy. The feed service may providefor the conversion of a tagged entity (e.g., the tag that is the name ofthe athlete) into a subscribable element. This subscribable elementpermits the fanatic user to subscribe to the tagged entity. Because ofthe prevalence of media items having the tag in the user's consumptionhistory, the feed service may further recommend to the fanatic user thatshe subscribe to the tagged entity. The feed service may then determinethat the fanatic user is subscribed to the athlete and may provide mediaitems having the tagged entity included in associated metadata to thefanatic user's feed. In this way, the user may receive additional taggedcontent including the advertisement in which the athlete appeared. Uponrequest by the user to access the media items, they may be provided tothe user through a media item view, such as a browser or a mobileapplication.

Thus, embodiments of the present disclosure may provide for subscriptionto tagged entities, thereby providing users with additional control andselection in receiving desired content. Additionally, embodiments of thepresent disclosure may facilitate cross-pollination of channels andother features and cross-promotion on the content-sharing platform.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary system architecture 100 for distributionand displaying of media items, in accordance with an embodiment of thedisclosure. The system architecture 100 includes a plurality of clientdevices 110A through 110N, a network 120, a content-sharing platform130, and a data store 150. In one embodiment, network 120 may be apublic network (e.g., the Internet), a private network (e.g., a localarea network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN)), a wired network (e.g.,Ethernet network), a wireless network (e.g., an 802.11 network or aWi-Fi network), or a cellular network (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE)network), having routers, hubs, switches, servers, and/or a combinationthereof. In one embodiment, the data store 150 may include a memory(e.g., random access memory), a cache, a drive (e.g., a hard drive), aflash drive, a database system, a storage area network (SAN), or anothertype of component or device capable of storing data. The data store 150may also include multiple storage components (e.g., multiple drives ormultiple databases) that may also span multiple computing devices (e.g.,multiple server computers) and storage devices such as may be present ina data center.

The client devices 110A-N may each include computing devices such aspersonal computers (PCs), laptops, mobile phones, smartphones, tabletcomputers, wearable computing devices, etc. Client devices 110A-N may beused to consume (e.g., view, hear, etc.) and upload content to thecontent-sharing platform 130. In some embodiments, client device 110A-Nmay also be referred to as “user devices.” Each client device includes amedia viewer 112. In one embodiment, the media viewers 112 may beapplications that allow users to receive visible content, such asimages, videos, web pages, documents, etc., and audio content such aslive audio and sound recordings. For example, the media viewer 112 maybe a web browser that can access, retrieve, present, and/or navigatecontent (e.g., web pages such as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)pages, digital media items, etc.) served by a web server. The mediaviewer 112 may render, display, and/or present the content (e.g., a webpage, a media viewer) to a user of a client device. The media viewer 112may also display an embedded media player (e.g., a Flash® player or anHTML5 player) that is embedded in a web page (e.g., a web page that mayprovide information about a product sold by an online merchant, acontent-sharing platform such as a social network). In another example,the media viewer 112 may be a standalone application, such as smartphoneapplication, that allows users to view digital media items (e.g.,digital videos, digital images, electronic books, shared text, etc.) aspart of the content-sharing platform 130.

The media viewers 112 may be provided to the client devices 110A-N bythe content-sharing platform 130 and/or a third-party distributionplatform. For example, the media viewers 112 may be embedded mediaplayers that are embedded in web pages provided by the content-sharingplatform 130. In another example, the media viewers 112 may beapplications that are downloaded from a server accessible to the clientdevices 110A-N through the network 120.

In general, functions described in one embodiment as being performed bythe content-sharing platform 130 can also be performed on the clientdevices 110A-N in other embodiments if appropriate. In addition, thefunctionality attributed to a particular component can be performed bydifferent or multiple components operating together. The content-sharingplatform 130 can also be accessed as a service provided to other systemsor devices through appropriate application programming interfaces(APIs), and thus is not limited to use in websites.

In some embodiments, the content-sharing platform 130 includes one ormore computing devices (such as a rackmount server, a router computer, aserver computer, a personal computer, a mainframe computer, a laptopcomputer, a tablet computer, a desktop computer, etc.), data stores(e.g., hard disks, memories, databases), networks, software components,and/or hardware components that may be used to provide a user withaccess to media items and/or provide the media items to the user. Forexample, the content-sharing platform 130 may allow a user to consume,upload, search for, approve of (“like”), dislike, share, and/or commenton media items. The content-sharing platform 130 may also include awebsite (e.g., a web page) and/or a smartphone application that may beused to provide a user with access to the media items.

The content-sharing platform 130 includes a media item storage 132 thatincludes a plurality of media items 134A through N. Examples of mediaitems 134A-N can include, and are not limited to, digital video, digitalmovies, digital photos, digital music, website content, social mediaupdates, electronic books (ebooks), electronic magazines, digitalnewspapers, digital audio books, electronic journals, blogs, real simplesyndication (RSS) feeds, electronic comic books, software applications,etc. Of note, the media items 134A-N include metadata, and metadata ofat least some media items may include tags representing tagged entitiespertaining to those media items. In some embodiments, thecontent-sharing platform 130 may store the media items 134A-N using thedata store 150. The media items 134A-N may be retrieved from data store150 for delivery (or streamed from the data store 150) to one or more ofclient devices 110A-N over network 120.

In some embodiments, media items 134A-N may be consumed (e.g., viewedand/or heard) via the Internet and/or via a mobile device application.As used herein, “media,” media item,” “online media item,” “digitalmedia,” “digital media item,” “content,” and “content item” can includeand refer to an electronic file that can be executed, loaded, or playedusing software, firmware, or hardware configured to present the digitalmedia item to a viewing user of the content-sharing platform 130.

In some embodiments, when a user uploads a media item to thecontent-sharing platform 130, that user may “tag” one or more entitiespertaining to the media item, thereby associating one or more tags withthat media item in metadata accessible to the platform 130. The tags mayfunction as brief descriptors of the media item. For example, the tagsmay identify an entity associated in some capacity with the media item.The entity may be a person heard and/or seen in the media item, a personinvolved in the creation of the media item, an object appearing in themedia item, a location appearing in the media item, a product or brandpresented in the media item, or an organization curating the media item.

This metadata may be received, processed, stored, and recalled by ametadata service 136 provided as part of the content-sharing platform130. As illustrated in FIG. 1, the metadata service 136 includes adatabase 138 with a plurality of metadata entries, illustrated asmetadata 140A-N. Each of the metadata entries in the database 138 may beassociated with a single media item of the media items 134A-N. Anexample of this metadata may be found in the metadata database 138 asillustrated in FIG. 2.

FIG. 2 shows an example of the metadata database 138 that includes aplurality of entries associated with media items, each entry includingat least an identifier of a media item. Each of the entries may alsoinclude one or more tags associated with entities pertaining to therespective media item. The identifiers may be titles, such as a titleentered by a user of the content-sharing platform 130. In someembodiments of the metadata database 138, the identifiers may be stringsof characters, such as alphanumeric characters and/or other charactersthat may be included in a uniform resource locator (URL) to facilitateaccess to the media item by the media viewer 112. In such embodiments,the title of the video or other media item may be included as metadataalong with the identifier in the metadata database 138. Many other kindsof metadata may be included in the metadata database 138, such as a typeof each media item, a creation or uploading date and time of each media,consumption history identifying one or more users of the content-sharingplatform 130 that have consumed media item, etc. Every media item havinga metadata entry including metadata stored in the metadata database 138may not have every kind of metadata stored in association with it.

As shown in FIG. 2, the entry for media item 134A includes an identifier“Champions_Trailer,” and a plurality of tags, including tags 202A, 202B,and 202C. The tags 202A-C provide brief descriptors of the media item134A in general or entities pertaining to the media item 134Aspecifically. These tags 202A-C, like the other tags in the database138, may be entered by a user upon upload of the associated media iteminto the content-sharing platform 130 or may be entered after upload. Insome embodiments only the user that uploaded the media item 134A may tagthe item at a later time, while in other embodiments additional usersmay be provided with the ability to tag the media items not uploaded bythose additional users in the content-sharing platform 130.

The tag 202A includes information identifying a person (e.g., the nameof the person) as well as information identifying a role that the personhas or had with respect to the media item 134A. In this instance, theperson is a person named “Jane Doe” and the role is that of contentproducer. Other tags may indicate other roles played by an individual ororganization with respect to other media items. For example, a tag mayindicate that a specific group or person made the music in a particularmedia item. Other roles may include director, actor, writer, etc. As isdescribed in more detail below, tags that include both a role and aperson or organization may be used to create a tagged entity specific tothe combination of role and person or organization. For example, the tag202D includes a person named “Jane Doe” in the role of actor withrespect to the media item 134D. This is distinguishable from the tag202A that includes the person named “Jane Doe” as a producer of themedia item 134A and from the tag 202C which includes “Jane Doe” withoutreference to any role. An identical tag is associated with the mediaitem 134D as tag 202E. The metadata database 138 shows an example of theinclusion of the tags found in metadata in the content-sharing platform130. Other formats for inclusion of tags in the metadata may be presentin other embodiments. While the metadata database 138 is illustrated inFIG. 1 as being present on the content-sharing platform 130, in someembodiments the database 138 is stored externally to the content-sharingplatform 130 and accessible to the content-sharing platform via thenetwork 120. In some embodiments, the metadata database 138 or a subsetthereof may be stored on one or more of client devices 110A-N. Forexample, a user that accesses the content-sharing platform 130 throughthe client device 110A may have a subset of the database 138, containinginformation specific to that user such as the user's consumptionhistory, stored on the client device 110A.

Returning to FIG. 1, when a request for one of media items 134A-N issubmitted using the client device 110A, the media item may be hosted onthe content-sharing platform 130 in the media item storage 132 and/ormay be hosted by the data store 150. The media item may be streamed ordownloaded to the client device 110A.

As illustrated in FIG. 1, the system architecture 100 further includes afeed service 142 as part of the content-sharing platform 130. The feedservice 142 provides feeds for the users of the content-sharing platform130. The feeds may include one or more media items for each of the usersto consume. The feeds may be based on specific requests for certaintypes of content and may also be based on a history of the media itemseach user has consumed on the content-sharing platform 130. The feedservice 142 may store, collect, and maintain user histories tofacilitate in feed management. In this way, the feed service 142 mayprovide media items in the feed of users that those users are morelikely to choose to watch and appreciate. Thus, the feed service 142includes feed data 144 that may include a plurality of feed items146A-N. These feed items 146A-N may be references or links to mediaitems to be included in the feeds.

In some embodiments, the feed service 142 may enable and manage aplurality of channels. A channel can be data content available from acommon source or data content having a common topic, theme, orsubstance. The data content can be digital content chosen by a user,digital content made available by a user, digital content uploaded by auser, digital content chosen by a content provider, digital contentchosen by a broadcaster, etc. Channels may be used by content-creatingusers to facilitate the distribution to interested users by allowingthose users of the content-sharing platform 130 to subscribe to one ormore channels. Returning to a previous example, the famous athlete mayhave a channel by which the athlete shares media items with fans thatare users of the content-sharing platform 130. When a user subscribes tothe channel, a new media item uploaded to the channel by the channel'soperator (e.g., the famous athlete) may be automatically included in theuser's feed by the feed service 142.

These feeds may further include recommendations of media items for theusers to consume, either directly in the feed or alongside or otherwisein connection with the user's feed in a user interface by which the userinteracts with the content-sharing platform 130 to request and consumemedia items. The recommendations made by the feed service 142 mayinclude individualized recommendations such that a first user receivesrecommendations that are different from those received by a second user.Additionally, the feed service 142 may provide for the use of tags inselecting media items for a user's feed as a feed item and further maybe used in recommending additional media items and/or channels of mediaitems to the user.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a feed service component 300 thatmay provide the feed service 142 or some of the functions thereof inaccordance with embodiments of the disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 3,the feed service component 300 may operate in communication with thedata store 150 over the network 120. In some embodiments, informationcontained on the data store 150 may be accessible to the feed servicecomponent 300 directly from the content-sharing platform 130. Forexample, the feed service component 300 may access the metadata service136 and the metadata database 138 on the content-sharing platform 130 orsimilar information present on the data store 150.

The feed service component 300 includes a tagging module 310. Thetagging module permits users of the content-sharing platform 130 to tagentities pertaining to one or more media items. In some embodiments, theuser that uploads a media item may tag entities in the media item. Inother embodiments, other users may also associate tags with the mediaitems. The resulting tag or tags are stored in association with themedia item or items in the data store 150. For the example, the tags maybe stored in the metadata database 368.

The feed service component 300 further includes a tag subscriptionmodule 320. The tag subscription module 320 may access information onthe data store 150 through the network 120, or on the content-sharingplatform 130, to permit users of the content-sharing platform 130 tosubscribe to tags included in the metadata database 368 and/or database138 of FIG. 1. In some embodiments, accomplishing this may includeaccessing the metadata database 368 to identify tags associated with themedia items, presenting one or more tags to a user, and subscribing theuser to the tags.

For example, when a user views videos associated with a tag, such as tag202A and tag 202E, above a threshold number of times (e.g., once, twice,one hundred times, etc.), the tag subscription module 320 mayautomatically subscribe the user to the tag or suggest that the usersubscribe to the tag. The tag subscription module 320 may analyze tagsubscription data to identify patterns among users. For example, if athreshold quantity or percentage of users that subscribe to tag 202B ofFIG. 2 also subscribe to tag 202C, the tag subscription module 320 mayrecommend subscribing to tag 202C to users that (of these two tags) onlysubscribe to tag 202B. Some tags may be identified by an administratoror operator of the content-sharing platform 130 as being related in someway. For example, if two musical acts are touring together, the tagsubscription module 320 may be configured to recommend users that havesubscribed to a tag identifying the first musical act subscribe to thesecond musical act. When a user watches a media item of either act, tagsidentifying both acts may be presented to the user as a recommendation.

Thus, a user of the content-sharing platform 130 may request tosubscribe to the tagged entity “Producer: Jane Doe.” This tagged entityis a person, Jane Doe, in her role as a producer of the media items. Thetag subscription module 320 may include an entry in the subscriptiondata 366 that indicates that the user is subscribed to Jane Doespecifically in her role or capacity as producer. A feed managementmodule 330 may recognize “Producer: Jane Doe”, and may identify mediaitems in the media item data 360 that are associated with Jane Doe asproducer because they include the tag “Producer: Jane Doe” in metadataavailable in the metadata database 368.

The feed service component also includes the feed management module 330that may assemble the feeds and associated feed data for the users ofthe content-sharing platform 130. In some embodiments, the feed of auser may contain references to media items in the feed data 362. In someembodiments, the feed management module 330 may include requested itemsin a user's feed (e.g. media items with subscribed tags in metadata orfrom a channel the user has subscribed to, etc.), as well as items thatare not requested (e.g., individually recommended items, items includingrecommended tags, items from recommended channels, etc.).

The feed service component 300, through the feed management module 330,may also have access to channel data 364 that provides for thecollection of media items into channels as described herein. Usingsubscription data 366, the feed management module 330 may identify thechannels to which a particular user has subscribed, identify one or moremedia items included in those channels, and provide those media items orreferences to those media items to the subscribing user.

This collection of identified media items, or a subset thereof, may thenbe provided to the user in the user's feed by the feed management module330. In this way, the feed service component 300 may identify tags andallow users to subscribe to the tags (or tagged entities) like the usercan subscribe to a channel, collect media items having the particulartag in metadata, and provide the collected media items to the user inthe user's feed.

In addition to permitting users of the content-sharing platform 130 tosubscribe to tagged entities as described herein, the feed servicecomponent 300 includes a tag recommendation module to suggest orrecommend additional tags to users for subscription. The suggestions maybe included directly in the users' feeds and identified as suggestions,as distinct from items that the feed management module 330 determinesare to be included because of the users' subscriptions. In someembodiments, the suggestions provided by the tag recommendation module340 may be presented in a user interface alongside, but separate from, aparticular user's feed in the user interface, by which the userinteracts with the content-sharing platform 130.

In some embodiments, the tag recommendation module 340 may suggest orrecommend tagged entities for a user to follow or subscribe to. This maybe done by observing a user's preferences as expressed by the user'spast consumption. For example, a user's consumption history may includedata similar to that seen in the database 138 shown in FIG. 2. Theuser's consumption history may identify consumed media items withcertain associated metadata. By determining the prevalence of each tagin the consumption history, the tag recommendation module 340 maysuggest that the user subscribe to or follow the tagged entitiesidentified by the tag. Alternatively, the user's consumption history maymerely include identifiers of media items, and the identifiers may thenbe used to query the metadata database 138 to identity tags associatedwith each identifier. For example, the tag recommendation module 340 maysuggest that a user with a history similar to that shown in FIG. 2,subscribe to Jane Doe in her capacity as producer by subscribing to the“Producer: Jane Doe” tag. After receiving a request from the user tosubscribe to “Producer: Jane Doe,” the feed management module 330 mayinclude media items that have the “Producer: Jane Doe” tag into theuser's feed. As another example, where a user has subscribed to“Producer: Jane Doe,” the tag recommendation module 340 may recommendthat the user subscribe to “Jane Doe” or “Actor: Jane Doe.”Additionally, the tag recommendation module 340 may identify the tagsassociated with a media item as it is being consumed by a user and, ifthose tags are subscribable, suggest that the user subscribe to the tagsto follow the tagged entities. For example, a user may be watching avideo of a famous athlete appearing in the athlete's channel, to whichthe user already subscribes. The feed suggestion module 330 may identifythat the famous athlete is also a tagged entity and suggest that theuser follow the famous athlete as a tagged entity, rather than justsubscribing to the athlete's channel. This may introduce additionalcontent to the user's feed in which the athlete is tagged, such as anadvertisement in which the athlete appears or a video of highlightscompiled and uploaded by another user.

A channel recommendation module 350 may also make other types ofsuggestions to users of the content-sharing platform 130. For example,the channel recommendation module 350 may recommend one or more channelsto a particular user based on the tagged entities to which that user hassubscribed. For example, after subscribing to the tag “Producer: JaneDoe,” the channel recommendation module 350 may suggest that the usersubscribe to a channel operated by Jane Doe. The channel recommendationmodule 350 may suggest that the user subscribe to a channel thatfrequently includes content produced by Jane Doe or may suggest achannel in which Jane Doe frequently has another role, such as writer,or in which Jane Doe frequently appears as an actor. The media items inthe channel operated by Jane Doe may be tagged with various tags (e.g.,“Jane Doe”, “Producer: Jane Doe”, “Actor: Jane Doe”, etc.) on upload byJane Doe. The channel recommendation module 350 may be configured todetect the prevalence of a tag in media items in the channels and thenrecommend the channels to users that have subscribed to the tag. Thus, auser that has subscribed to a “Jane Doe” tag may receive arecommendation from the channel recommendation module 350 to subscribeto an official channel operated by Jane Doe. Such a threshold frequencymay be determined as a percentage of associated media items to totalmedia items in a channel or by some other determination. Therecommendation may be provided when the user plays a media item that isboth tagged with a tag that identifies a tagged entity and is in thechannel being recommended.

The channel recommendation module 350 may also consult a user'sconsumption history to identify channels to recommend to the user. Thechannel recommendation module 350 may identify tagged entities that theuser may be interested in from counting and processing the tags from theuser's consumption history. The channel recommendation 350 may identifychannels associated with those tagged entities, using channel data 364,and suggest that the user subscribe to one or more of those channels.

In this way, the feed service component 300 may serve as part of thesystem architecture 100 of FIG. 1 to enable users to subscribe to taggedindividuals or other tagged entities such that media items including thetag in associated metadata. Thus, the system architecture 100 provides asystem whereby a tag associated with a plurality of media items may beconverted into a subscribable element such that a user can subscribe tothe tagged entity associated with the tag. The system architecture 100can make recommendations to users based on the tags in the users'histories, based on relatedness to other tagged entities or otherchannels, and based on tags associated with a media item being consumed.

In situations in which the systems discussed here collect personalinformation about users, or make use of personal information, the usersmay be provided with an opportunity to control whether thecontent-sharing platform 130 collects user information (e.g.,information about a user's social network, social actions or activities,profession, a user's preferences, a user's current location, or a user'sconsumption history), or to control whether and/or how to receivecontent from the content-sharing platform 130 that may be more relevantto the user. In addition, certain data may be treated in one or moreways before it is stored or used, so that personally identifiableinformation is removed. For example, a user's identity may be treated sothat no personally identifiable information can be determined for theuser, or a user's geographic location may be generalized where locationinformation is obtained (such as to a city, ZIP code, or state level),so that a particular location of a user cannot be determined. Thus, theuser may have control over how information is collected about the userand used by the content-sharing platform 130.

FIG. 4A is a flow diagram illustrating a method 400 for facilitating thesubscription of a user of a content-sharing platform to a tagged entity.The method 400 may be performed by processing logic that compriseshardware (e.g., circuitry, dedicated logic, programmable logic,microcode, etc.), software (e.g., instructions run on a processingdevice to perform hardware simulation), or a combination thereof.

For simplicity of explanation, the method 400 and other methods of thisdisclosure are depicted and described as a series of acts. However, actsin accordance with this disclosure can occur in various orders and/orconcurrently, and with other acts not presented and described herein.Furthermore, not all illustrated acts may be required to implement themethods in accordance with the disclosed subject matter. In addition,those skilled in the art will understand and appreciate that the methodscould alternatively be represented as a series of interrelated statesvia a state diagram or events. Additionally, it should be appreciatedthat the methods disclosed in this specification are capable of beingstored on an article of manufacture to facilitate transporting andtransferring such methods to computing devices. The term “article ofmanufacture,” as used herein, is intended to encompass a computerprogram accessible from any non-transitory, tangible computer-readabledevice or storage medium. In one embodiment, method 400 may be performedby the content-sharing platform 130 and subsystems thereof as shown inFIGS. 1, 2, and 3.

Embodiments of the method 400 may begin at block 402 when the processinglogic maintains subscription data specifying a plurality of entitiessubscribed to by a plurality of users. Each of the plurality of entitiesmay be a tagged entity associated with a tag. To more clearly describesome embodiments of the method 400, reference is made to some featuresof FIGS. 1, 2, and 3 and described herein. For example, the feed servicecomponent 300 may include a feed management module 330 that collects,maintains, and uses subscription data 366 to determine what items are tobe included in users' feeds in the content-sharing platform 130. The tagsubscription module 320 may identify a tag associated with an entity andcreate a subscribable element associated with the tagged entity to whichthe users may subscribe. Such subscriptions may then be included in thesubscription data 366 maintained by the feed management module 330.

The processing logic may maintain the subscription data 366 byperforming many other actions and operations. For example, the feedsuggestion module 330 of FIG. 3 may recommend to the user that the usersubscribe to one or more tagged entities if the associated tags appearin the user's history and the user has not yet subscribed to the taggedentities. The feed management module 330 may receive a request from theuser to subscribe to the one or more tagged entities and store an entryin the subscription data 366 that indicates that the user is subscribedto the tagged entities.

Also as part of maintaining subscription data the processing logic maymonitor a database of media item metadata, like the metadata database368 and/or the database 138. The metadata may include one or more tagsassociated with a plurality of media items available in thecontent-sharing platform. The processing logic may select at least oneof the one or more tags and associate the tag with a subscribableelement in the content-sharing platform, to generate a tagged entitythat is subscribable by the plurality of users. The subscribable elementmay be a listing or entry in a table of channel data 364, such that thetagged entity may function as a channel within the content-sharingplatform 130, a channel that is managed by the feed service component300 rather than by a user of the content-sharing platform 130.

At block 404, the processing logic may identify a media item associatedwith the one or more tagged entities of the plurality of entities. Forexample, when a user uploads a media item into the content-sharingplatform 130, the user may enter one or more tags to be associated withthe media item. Also upon upload of the media item, or at a later time,the feed service component 300 may identify the media item as beingassociated with a tagged entity, e.g. one of the media item's tags mayhave been associated with a subscribable tagged entity.

At block 406, the processing logic determines, based on the subscriptiondata 366, a user of the plurality of users that is subscribed to thetagged entities of the media item. The feed service component 300,whether by the feed management module 330 or by the tag subscriptionmodule 320 may query the subscription data 366 to determine which usershave subscribed to the tag identifying the tagged entity. Then, at block408, the processing logic provides the media item to the user. This maybe done by including the media item having the tag in its metadata inthe feed of the subscribing user as described herein. Alternatively, areference or link to the media item may be included in the feed.

Some embodiments of the method 400 may also include operations in whichthe processing logic identifies a channel of media items, associatedwith the tag, that includes the media item provided to the user andrecommends to the user that the user subscribe to the channel. Thechannel associated with the tag is generated by the content-sharingplatform based on a prevalence of the tag in the database.

FIG. 4B illustrates an example user interface (UI) 450 for facilitatingthe subscription of a user of a content-sharing platform to a taggedentity, in accordance with some aspects of the present disclosure. UI450 may include area 452 and area 454. Area 452 presents the user's feedwith videos 460 associated with tagged entities subscribed by the user.For example, videos 460 may be associated with people that the user isfollowing such as an actor in video 460A, a person participating in anevent recorded in video 460B, a producer of video 460C, etc. Area 454may present a list of recommended channels 470 that were identifiedusing tagged entities as discussed in more detail herein. Eachrecommended channel 470 may be presented with a subscribe UI control(e.g., a button or check box) 472 that allows the user to subscribe to arespective channel right away. Some of the recommended channels includea visual indicator (e.g., a check mark) 474 that specifies that thechannel has been verified by an operator of the content-sharingplatform. The verification may indicate that a person or groupidentified with the channel actually is associated with the channel. Forexample, the verification communicate to users of the content-sharingplatform that the channel is authentically operated.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 500 for facilitating thesubscription of a user of a content-sharing platform to a channel. Themethod 500 may be performed by processing logic that comprises hardware(e.g., circuitry, dedicated logic, programmable logic, microcode, etc.),software (e.g., instructions run on a processing device to performhardware simulation), or a combination thereof.

Embodiments of the method 500 may begin at block 502 in which processinglogic identifies a tag that is subscribed to by a first user of acontent-sharing platform. For example, the tag subscription module 320of the feed service component 300 shown in FIG. 3 may identify that theuser as being subscribed to “Producer: Jane Doe.” The channelrecommendation module 350 may receive this information from the tagsubscription module 320 and identify a channel associated with the tag“Producer: Jane Doe.” The channel may include one or more media itemsthat have been associated with the tag.

At block 504, the processing logic may recommend the channel of mediaitems to the user for subscription by the user. For example, the channelrecommendation module 350 may determine that the channel is related tothe tag and provide the user with a recommendation in a user interface.

At block 506, the processing logic subscribes the user to the channel.Referring to FIG. 3, the feed service component 300 may receive arequest from the user to subscribe to the channel. The feed managementmodule 330 may store this channel subscription in the subscription data366 and use the subscription to provide one or more media items from thechannel to the user's feed.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating a method 600 for facilitating thesubscription of a user of a content-sharing platform to a channel. Themethod 600 may be performed by processing logic as described herein.

Embodiments of the method 600 may begin at block 602. At block 602, theprocessing logic identifies tags from a consumption history of a user ofa content-sharing platform. The tags may be associated with taggedentities, such as a person, a place, a product, etc. as describedherein. For example, the feed service component 300 of FIG. 3 mayidentify a plurality of tags in a user's consumption history, which mayinclude a plurality of media item identifiers and tags for at least someof the identified media items.

At block 604, the processing logic determines a tagged entity that islikely to be of interest to the user. This may be done by identifying atag that appears the most in the user's consumption history, or the tenmost frequently appearing tags in the consumption history, etc. In someembodiments, certain tags may be excluded from the determination if theuser has already subscribed to channels associated with those tags.

At block 606, the processing logic identifies a channel of media itemswith the tagged entity of interest. In some embodiments, this may bedone by the channel recommendation module 350 searching the channel data364. The channel data may include a listing of tags in order of thefrequency of appearance in media items included in the channel. In thisway or in other ways, the relationship of a tag to a channel may bedetermined. For example, the user may have watched one or more mediaitems having a “Jane Doe” tag in metadata. The “Jane Doe” tag may beassociated with a person “Jane Doe”. Channel recommendation module 350may identify a channel that is associated with Jane Doe. For example,the channel may be an official channel operated by Jane Doe, or she mayfrequently appear in media items in the channel, with her appearancesbeing tagged in the media items.

At block 608, the channel recommendation module 350 recommends thechannel for subscription by the user. The recommendation may be providedin the user's feed or in a special feed that includes onlyrecommendations. The recommendation may also be provided in connectionwith the display of a media item. After receiving the recommendation,the user may choose to subscribe to the channel. In this way, channelsof media items may be recommended to a user based tags in on the user'sconsumption history.

FIG. 7 illustrates a diagrammatic representation of a machine in theexemplary form of a computer system 700 within which a set ofinstructions or sets of instructions, for causing the machine to performany one or more of the methodologies discussed herein, may be executed.In alternative embodiments, the machine may be connected (e.g.,networked) to other machines in a LAN, an intranet, an extranet, or theInternet. The machine may operate in the capacity of a server or aclient machine in client-server network environment, or as a peermachine in a peer-to-peer (or distributed) network environment. Themachine may be a personal computer (PC), a tablet PC, a set-top box(STB), a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a smartphone, a webappliance, a server, a network router, switch or bridge, or any machinecapable of executing a set of instructions (sequential or otherwise)that specify actions to be taken by that machine. Further, while only asingle machine is illustrated, the term “machine” shall also be taken toinclude any collection of machines that individually or jointly executea set (or multiple sets) of instructions to perform any one or more ofthe methodologies discussed herein.

The exemplary computer system 700 includes a processing device(processor) 702, a main memory 704 (e.g., read-only memory (ROM), flashmemory, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) such as synchronous DRAM(SDRAM) or Rambus DRAM (RDRAM), etc.), a static memory 706 (e.g., flashmemory, static random access memory (SRAM), etc.), and a data storagedevice 718, which communicate with each other via a bus 708.

Processor 702 represents one or more general-purpose processing devicessuch as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like, havingone or more cores. More particularly, the processor 702 may be a complexinstruction set computing (CISC) microprocessor, reduced instruction setcomputing (RISC) microprocessor, very long instruction word (VLIW)microprocessor, or a processor implementing other instruction sets orprocessors implementing a combination of instruction sets. The processor702 may also be one or more special-purpose processing devices such asan application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmablegate array (FPGA), a digital signal processor (DSP), network processor,or the like. The processor 702 is configured to execute instructions 726for performing the operations and steps discussed herein. For example,the processor 702 may execute instructions 726 to perform methods 400,500, and 600 as shown herein in FIGS. 4, 5, and 6 and to provide thefeed service 142 of FIG. 1 and the feed service component 300 of FIG. 3.

The computer system 700 may further include a network interface device722. The computer system 700 also may include a video display unit 710(e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD), a cathode ray tube (CRT), or atouch screen), an alphanumeric input device 712 (e.g., a physicalkeyboard or a virtual keyboard), a cursor control device 714 (e.g., amouse), and a signal generation device 720 (e.g., a speaker).

The data storage device 718 may include a non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium 724 on which is stored one or more setsof instructions 726 (e.g., software) embodying any one or more of themethodologies or functions described herein. The instructions 726 mayalso reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory704 and/or within the processor 702 during execution thereof by thecomputer system 700, the main memory 704 and the processor 702 alsoconstituting computer-readable storage media. The instructions 726 mayfurther be transmitted or received over a network 774 via the networkinterface device 722.

In one embodiment, the instructions 726 include instructions for a mediaproviding a media item storage, a metadata service, a feed service, afeed service component, a media viewer or other features which maycorrespond, respectively, to identically-named counterparts describedwith respect to FIGS. 1, 2, and 3, and/or a software library containingmethods for displaying content in between loops of a looping media item.While the computer-readable storage medium 724 is shown in an exemplaryembodiment to be a single medium, the term “computer-readable storagemedium” should be taken to include a single medium or multiple media(e.g., a centralized or distributed database, and/or associated cachesand servers) that store the one or more sets of instructions. The term“computer-readable storage medium” shall also be taken to include anynon-transitory medium that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying aset of instructions for execution by the machine and that cause themachine to perform any one or more of the methodologies of the presentdisclosure. The term “computer-readable storage medium” shallaccordingly be taken to include, but not be limited to, solid-statememories, optical media, and magnetic media.

In the foregoing description, numerous details are set forth. It will beapparent, however, to one of ordinary skill in the art having thebenefit of this disclosure, that the present disclosure may be practicedwithout these specific details. In some instances, well-known structuresand devices are shown in block diagram form, rather than in detail, inorder to avoid obscuring the present disclosure.

Some portions of the detailed description have been presented in termsof algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bitswithin a computer memory. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are the means used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their workto others skilled in the art. An algorithm is here, and generally,conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps leading to a desiredresult. The steps are those requiring physical manipulations of physicalquantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take theform of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored,transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It hasproven convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, torefer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters,terms, numbers, or the like.

It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar termsare to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and aremerely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unlessspecifically stated otherwise as apparent from the following discussion,it is appreciated that throughout the description, discussions utilizingterms such as “providing”, “monitoring”, “determining”, “receiving”,“identifying”, “generating”, “maintaining” or the like, refer to theactions and processes of a computer system, or similar electroniccomputing device, that manipulates and transforms data represented asphysical (e.g., electronic) quantities within the computer system'sregisters and memories into other data similarly represented as physicalquantities within the computer system memories or registers or othersuch information storage, transmission or display devices.

The disclosure also relates to a system for performing the operationsherein. This system may be specially constructed for the requiredpurposes, or it may include a general purpose computer selectivelyactivated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer.Such a computer program may be stored in a computer readable storagemedium, such as, but not limited to, any type of disk including floppydisks, optical disks, CD-ROMs, and magnetic-optical disks, read-onlymemories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMs), EPROMs, EEPROMs,magnetic or optical cards, or any type of media suitable for storingelectronic instructions.

The words “example” or “exemplary” are used herein to mean serving as anexample, instance, or illustration. Any aspect or design describedherein as “example’ or “exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed aspreferred or advantageous over other aspects or designs. Rather, use ofthe words “example” or “exemplary” is intended to present concepts in aconcrete fashion. As used in this application, the term “or” is intendedto mean an inclusive “or” rather than an exclusive “or”. That is, unlessspecified otherwise, or clear from context, “X includes A or B” isintended to mean any of the natural inclusive permutations. That is, ifX includes A; X includes B; or X includes both A and B, then “X includesA or B” is satisfied under any of the foregoing instances. In addition,the articles “a” and “an” as used in this application and the appendedclaims should generally be construed to mean “one or more” unlessspecified otherwise or clear from context to be directed to a singularform. Moreover, use of the term “an embodiment” or “one embodiment” or“an embodiment” or “one embodiment” throughout is not intended to meanthe same embodiment or embodiment unless described as such.

Reference throughout this specification to “one embodiment” or “anembodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, orcharacteristic described in connection with the embodiment is includedin at least one embodiment. Thus, the appearances of the phrase “in someembodiments” or “in an embodiment” in various places throughout thisspecification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.In addition, the term “or” is intended to mean an inclusive “or” ratherthan an exclusive “or.”

It is to be understood that the above description is intended to beillustrative, and not restrictive. Many other embodiments will beapparent to those of skill in the art upon reading and understanding theabove description. The scope of the disclosure should, therefore, bedetermined with reference to the appended claims, along with the fullscope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method comprising:maintaining subscription data that is stored in a subscription datastore, the subscription data specifying a plurality of entitiessubscribed to by a plurality of users, each of the plurality of entitiesbeing a tagged entity associated with a tag, wherein the tagged entityis subscribed to by a particular user of the plurality of users inresponse to a subscription recommendation provided to the particularuser with respect to the tagged entity; identifying a media itemassociated with one or more tagged entities of the plurality ofentities, wherein the tagged entities are depicted in the media item;determining, based on the subscription data, a user of the plurality ofusers that is subscribed to the depicted tagged entities of the mediaitem; providing, for presentation to the user, the media item associatedwith the one or more depicted tagged entities of the media item, whereinthe user is subscribed to the one or more depicted tagged entities;identifying a channel of media items that includes the media itemassociated with the one or more depicted tagged entities to which theuser is subscribed; and recommending to the user viewing the media itemthat the user subscribe to the channel that includes the media itemassociated with the one or more depicted tagged entities to which theuser is subscribed.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein providing themedia item comprises causing the media item to be added to a feed of theuser.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein maintaining subscription datafurther comprises: recommending to the user that the user subscribe tothe tagged entity; receiving a request from the user to subscribe to thetagged entity; and storing an entry in the subscription data store, theentry indicating that the user is subscribed to the tagged entity. 4.The method of claim 1, wherein maintaining subscription data furthercomprises: monitoring a database of media item metadata, the metadatacomprising one or more tags associated with a plurality of media itemsavailable in a content-sharing platform; selecting at least one of theone or more tags; and associating, by a processing device, the at leastone tag with a subscribable element in the content-sharing platform, togenerate a tagged entity that is subscribable by the plurality of users.5. The method of claim 4, wherein monitoring the database of media itemmetadata further comprises storing the one or more tags in the databaseof media item metadata upon upload of a new media item into thecontent-sharing platform.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein storing theone or more tags in the database of media items upon upload into thecontent-sharing platform comprises receiving the one or more tags froman uploading user that uploads the new media item into thecontent-sharing platform.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein maintainingsubscription data further comprises: monitoring a media item consumptionhistory of the user; identifying another tag associated with anothertagged entity to which the user is not subscribed, the other tagoccurring multiple times in the media item consumption history of theuser; and recommending to the user that the user subscribe to the othertagged entity.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the tag identifies aperson, an object, or a location and the tagged entity permits the userto subscribe to the person, object, or location.
 9. The method of claim1, wherein the channel of media items that includes the media item isassociated with another tagged entity.
 10. The method of claim 9,wherein the channel is generated by the content-sharing platform basedon a prevalence of the other tagged entity in a database of media itemmetadata.
 11. A system comprising: a memory storing instructionsthereon; and a processing device communicably coupled to the memory, theprocessing device executing the instructions to: maintain subscriptiondata that is stored in a subscription data store, the subscription dataspecifying a plurality of entities subscribed to by a plurality ofusers, each of the plurality of entities being a tagged entityassociated with a tag wherein the tagged entity is subscribed to by aparticular user of the plurality of users in response to a subscriptionrecommendation provided to the particular user with respect to thetagged entity; identify a media item having one or more tagged entitiesof the plurality of entities, wherein the tagged entities are depictedin the media item; determine, based on the subscription data, a user ofthe plurality of users that is subscribed to the depicted taggedentities of the media item; provide, for presentation to the user, themedia item associated with the one or more depicted tagged entities ofthe media item, wherein the user is subscribed to the one or moredepicted tagged entities; identify a channel of media items thatincludes the media item associated with the one or more depicted taggedentities to which the user is subscribed; and recommend to the userviewing the media item via a user interface, that the user subscribe tothe channel that includes the media item associated with the one or moredepicted tagged entities to which the user is subscribed.
 12. The systemof claim 11, wherein to provide the media item, the processing device isto cause the media item to be added to a feed of the user.
 13. Thesystem of claim 11, wherein to maintain the subscription data, theprocessing device is to: monitor a database of media item metadata, themetadata comprising one or more tags associated with a plurality ofmedia items available in a content-sharing platform; select at least oneof the one or more tags; and associate, by a processing device, the atleast one tag with a subscribable element in the content-sharingplatform, to generate a tagged entity that is subscribable by theplurality of users.
 14. The system of claim 11, wherein to maintain thesubscription data, the processing device is to: monitor a media itemconsumption history of the user; identify another tag associated withanother tagged entity to which the user is not subscribed, the other tagoccurring multiple times in the media item consumption history of theuser; recommend to the user that the user subscribe to the other taggedentity.
 15. The system of claim 11, wherein the tag identifies a person,an object, or a location and the tagged entity permits the user tosubscribe to the person, object, or location.
 16. The system of claim11, wherein the channel of media items that includes the media item isgenerated by the content-sharing platform based on a prevalence of thetag in the database.
 17. A non-transitory computer-readable storagemedium storing instructions that, when executed by a processing device,cause the processing device to perform operations comprising:maintaining subscription data that is stored in a subscription datastore, the subscription data specifying a plurality of entitiessubscribed to by a plurality of users, each of the plurality of entitiesbeing a tagged entity associated with a tag wherein the tagged entity issubscribed to by a particular user of the plurality of users in responseto a subscription recommendation provided to the particular user withrespect to the tagged entity; identifying a media item having one ormore tagged entities of the plurality of entities, wherein the taggedentities are depicted in the media item; determining, by the processingdevice and based on the subscription data, a user of the plurality ofusers that is subscribed to the depicted tagged entities of the mediaitem; providing, for presentation to the user, the media item associatedwith the one or more depicted tagged entities of the media item, whereinthe user is subscribed to the one or more depicted tagged entities;identifying a channel of media items that includes the media itemassociated with the one or more depicted tagged entities to which theuser is subscribed; and recommending to the user viewing the media itemvia a user interface, that the user subscribe to the channel thatincludes the media item associated with the one or more depicted taggedentities to which the user is subscribed.
 18. The non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein providing themedia item comprises causing the media item to be added to a feed of theuser.
 19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim17, wherein maintaining subscription data further comprises: monitoringa database of media item metadata, the metadata comprising one or moretags associated with a plurality of media items available in acontent-sharing platform; selecting at least one of the one or moretags; and associating, by a processing device, the at least one tag witha subscribable element in the content-sharing platform, to generate atagged entity that is subscribable by the plurality of users.
 20. Thenon-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, whereinmaintaining subscription data further comprises: monitoring aconsumption history of the user; identifying another tag associated withanother tagged entity to which the user is not subscribed, the other tagoccurring multiple times in the consumption history of the user;recommending to the user that the user subscribe to the other taggedentity.
 21. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim17, wherein the channel of media items that includes the media item isgenerated by the content-sharing platform based on a prevalence of thetag in the database.